


Yesteryears

by freshavocadude



Category: RWBY
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Light Angst, No Dialogue, Summer Was Yang's Mom Too, Team RWBY - Freeform, alternitavely titled Team RWBY: Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:47:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22671229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freshavocadude/pseuds/freshavocadude
Summary: "Have you ever met someone and thought to yourself, they are the personification ofthisword?"A short glimpse into each member of Team RWBY's childhoods.
Kudos: 15





	Yesteryears

**Author's Note:**

> This originally began as an idea for four one-shots, but I ended up not having the inspiration to make them long enough. Then I abandoned the idea. Then I came back months later and merged it all into one short, sweet, though very difficult to write piece. Dialogue is usually my strong suit, but I'm very pleased with the outcome of this one. I hope you all like it!
> 
> P.S. The word for Blake is bravery. (Also this is set before she met Adam).
> 
> P.P.S. Just ignore the sudden shift from present tense to past tense, it be that way sometimes.

  
_“Every nightmare just discloses_  
_It's your blood that's red like roses_  
_And no matter what I do_  
_Nothing ever takes the place of you”_

The sunset paints the forest crimson. 

With autumn comes the warmth of home; the enticing smell of chocolate chip cookies drifts lazily through each room of the little house in Patch, reaching even the farthest corner of the farthest room tucked at the end of the upper hall. Gold falls, burning and cozy, through the window panes. The light catches on sofas and bookshelves, coats the floors, gracefully sets the kitchen counters aglow. 

A soft song is being hummed by the woman who stands in front of the oven. Its sound coalesces with the aroma, blending into something as gentle and familiar as the swish of hair alongside one’s cheek.

Ruby stands to the side, watching, her mouth watering and her eyes big—shining silver moons, a hint at what evening has in store. Her mother looks down from high, high above. Her face is beautiful, her smile as warm as the room they stand in. 

Laughter bubbles through the door. High, twinkling notes and louder, deeper tones. 

When it opens, there are bouncing curls catching her gaze and behind strong legs, she sees the splash of red from their wheelbarrow. Yang and her father are as golden as ever. The scarlet of the sun fills the folds in their clothes, their hair.

Yang’s arms wrap tight around her and through the ear pressed to her chest, Ruby can hear the wild pump of her sister’s heart. Giggles overtake her too as they hop on the balls of their feet together. Somewhere overhead the tender voices of their parents cast a cocoon of comfort around them. It is just the four of them and the sun. A fairy-tale bursting into real life with every breath of brilliant air.

And of course, hot, gooey chocolate smearing across rosy cheeks and left behind as fingerprints.

  
_“But I don't intend to suffer any longer_  
_Here's where your dominion falls apart_  
_I'm shattering the mirror_  
_that kept me split in pieces_  
_That stood between my mind and my heart”_

Weiss was exactly ten when her life fell apart.

Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last. But sitting at the table this evening, watching her parents snap and scream obscenities at each other over a glittering silver-blue cake topped with turrets of frosted sweet cream, and half-empty glasses of punch, this was definitely the lowest moment of her short life thus far.

She sank lower and lower into her perfectly plush, perfectly engraved chair and couldn’t help the waves of confusion that washed over her, tugging at her heart. The smiles from before were still present, but bore bared teeth gleaming like icicles. 

It was only a few moments later when from one side of the table the screech of chair legs came. The echoing slam of a fist on it's polished surface from the other made Weiss jump. Then both her father and her mother turned their backs on each other, stalking through opposite, but identical, shimmering silver doors at the ends of the hall. Both slammed shut.

It was very quiet.

Weiss exhaled the shaky breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She sat up, carefully, methodically, and pushed her chair back. Then stood with shoulders squared. Straight-backed and with all the poise of a jeweled star, she turned slowly away from the table and walked out one of the grand pairs of doors herself. 

The luminescent white balloons tied to the wrists of suits of armor bordering the doorway gleamed as she passed, but she did not look at them.

It was Winter who found her later, tucked into an armchair in the corner of her bedroom, watching the moonlight creep along the floor. Her older sister opened the door silently, and approached with hands behind her back. She stopped when she reached Weiss, knelt on the floor in front of her, and revealed the secret between her palms. A slice of cake on a gilded platter and two similarly gold-etched forks graced Weiss’s eyes, glinting in the reflection from her windows. 

Winter offered a quirked lip, and Weiss’s lips twitched shyly in return. She took one fork, her sister took the other, and the rest of the evening was spent in the armchair, quiet giggles occasionally sweeping through the thawing room, melting the small scattering of crystals that had inched over her heart.

  
_“Dry your eyes now, baby_  
_Broken wings won't hold you down_  
_You'll take flight soon, baby_  
_You'll be lifted up_  
_And you'll be there”_

Hundreds of people. Hundreds of signs. Hundreds of shouts.

Wood dug into Blake’s tiny fingers as she clutched her flag tighter, raising it higher into the air, demanding for it to be seen. The emblem of the White Fang—no, of her people—blazed in white upon it. She was small, yes, but as she added her voice to the throng, she felt the fire in her lungs. Her desperation warmed her, burst from her, added to the crackling of electricity in the air.

Bodies pressed in on each side. She was surrounded by faunus much bigger and taller than her, big enough that she could have been hurt. But she wasn’t being pushed aside. No one snapped at her to get out of the way or looked down on her for being a child. And she had no reason to believe they would.

The energy of the crowd cracked like a whip. The emotions pushed and pulled like the tide, rose and fell like the phases of the splintered moon. 

Rage and anguish. Grief and fear. Pride and passion. 

They tugged at Blake and twisted her insides. She could feel everything, and as she let the emotions sweep her up and carry her heart high into the air, that’s how she knew. She was here. She belonged. She mattered. And so did all the others she stood beside, every voice that bore those emotions into being were an integral part of this cherished world.

Brothers and sisters. Brothers and sisters.

She was right where she was supposed to be.

Later, when she returned home, picking idly at a splinter she had acquired from the protest, her parents would wrap her tightly in their arms. The scents of a meal on the grill would tease the grumblings in her empty stomach. She would smell the earthy scents of the rainforest and listen to the gentle sounds of rain spattering across the leaves with both sets of her ears, and feel the embers inside her glow.

  
_“As any remarkable heart_  
_Has gone through the hardship and shame_  
_That's born of standing apart_  
_From the easily processed, the uniform army of same_  
_And that's just so lame!”_

Dust in her eyes and a song straining in her bones, Yang took her stance once more. It was only a few moves, ones that her uncle and father had shown her together in what may simply have been an effort to delay her questions. Her chest was heaving at a rapid rate but she had no intention of stopping. 

She had to get stronger.

Her pounding heartbeat was accompanied by an ever-present ache. There was pain; a sharply pointed memory of sunlight and gooey chocolate almost as close as the streaming light through the treetops above her. Close but forever out of reach. Gone. There was fear; the branches of the trees overhead curled themselves into claws, stretching to block the light entirely. Flashes of remembered red in the shadows beneath bushes made her breath quiver. 

But most of all there was longing. 

It pumped hotly through her blood. This yearning guided each swing of her fists, gathered in the muscles of her legs. A hunger that beat through her. To run, to search, to find, to know. Yang found as she practiced that what burned inside her was nothing more than the smallest of questions. Only one. Every ache, every piece of her body that hurt always came back around to simply—

Why?

Why? Why? Why? 

Golden laughter and a shimmering white cape twining gracefully together before being torn apart. Worn edges of a photograph. The creak of wheelbarrow wheels in the darkness.

It was all fuel to her fire. 

That tiny, insignificant, big, important question flickered like miniature solar flares in every synapse, roaring its way into every nerve as she moved, moved, moved.

Sweat coursed down her forehead, down her neck in a line between her shoulder blades, but she ignored it. Yang kept her focus split. One part of her mind fastened on her footwork—the line of her body and the way it was angled to the ground, but never anchored there. Words clanged together in her head, reminding her. She wasn’t going to get anywhere if she didn’t move her feet. But nor would she if she didn’t pay attention to them either and ended up missing a step. 

The rest of her mind simply emboldened the rhythm pounding in her ears. The blaze that simmered beneath her skin. Wanting. Needing. Searching.

She was never going to stop.

  
_“It's not destiny_  
_It would be a_  
_Grave mistake to think so_  
_Every choice is ours and ours alone_  
_This hasn't all been mapped by fate_  
_This is the future we create_  
_And we're powered by_  
_Every tear that's dried”_

**Author's Note:**

> The songs for each set of lyrics are as follows: Red Like Roses Pt. II, This Life Is Mine, Wings, Ignite, and The Triumph.
> 
> Please let me know what you thought! This was a bit of a challenge for me, a way to stretch my writing abilities. I enjoyed writing it!
> 
> [tumblr](casualavocados.tumblr.com)   
>  [twitter](https://twitter.com/casualavocados)


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